school website is crap ..is yours?

I know they have better things to worry about and it's more important they are teaching and they may not have time to keep it up to datebut there isn't even a school calendar on itit's woefully out of dateand basically shit

Our website is up, running and current. Newsletters, snow warnings, photos for this year, upcoming events. Run by the DH, the office staff and a select number of very IT literate people.Minimum expectation for teachers and the VLE is that weekly homework is on there, plus any upcoming class events, useful weblinks for current topics and that it's checked every day in case parents have messaged.Yes, it's a bugger to do. But we do it.

Our school has a FB page, but it is locked down so only the school can post.Most of the parents also belong to our own FB Group. It is private and by invitation only, but is a very effective way of saying 'have class 1 got homework this week?' or 'DS has come home with an extra jumper' or 'remind me which week school dinners we're on'. I've never seen any of the school children on either of the pages.

DD's current primary (she's in the nursery) have a woeful website - but at least there is one and it gets updated. If I were the HT I might ensure that the person who did the updating could at least spell! Doesn't give me any confidence that she will care whether or not my child can spell.

When I was looking at schools for the Primary application form I checked out all the websites - the better the school, the better the website it appeared.

Our school have a Facebook page. It seems to work quite well, they also have a twitter account but the website looks like it hasn't been touched for years. The last news letter is from 2009 and the photo of the head teacher looks 20 years younger!

10.(1) Subject to paragraph (5), where a website is maintained for a school by or on behalf of the governing body of a maintained school, the governing body must arrange for the information specified in Schedule 4 to be published on that website.

(2) Subject to paragraph (5), where there is no website maintained for the school, the governing body must arrange for the information specified in Schedule 4 to be published on a website, the address and details of which are made known to parents.

(3) The governing body must provide a paper copy of the information published on the website without charge to parents on request.

(4) Subject to paragraph (6), the governing body must arrange for the information published on the website to be updated as soon as is reasonably practicable following a change to that information and, in any event, at least annually.

(5) In respect of the information specified in paragraph 2 of Schedule 4, the requirements in paragraphs (1) and (2) to publish this information apply to the governing body of a community and voluntary controlled school, but not to the governing bodies of other maintained schools.

(6) In respect of the information specified in paragraph 2 of Schedule 4, the governing body of a community and voluntary controlled school must arrange for this information to be updated not later than six weeks before the date up to which parents may express a preference for the school in respect of the admission year. 

(4) In regulation 11 (supplementary provisions relating to published documents)

nailak - the staff in your school are lucky to have such a forward thnking GB.

In our LEA only the larger Primary Schools (I know of 3 out of about 60) have someone whose job is to run/maintain the website. For everyone else (most schools have between 2 and 6 classes) it is just another burden on a member of the teaching staff.You get sent on a course and then booom - it suddenly becomes your responsibility.

My DCs' school used to have a great website - it was designed in response to a questionnaire and so included things that were a priority to parents/carers, staff, pupils and the wider community e.g. photographs included examples of children's work and of the classrooms rather than 30 pictures of each child in a class doing the same thing, the PTA had a page to promote their events, class curriculum maps and termly letters were available on a year group page, there was a login page for children to access certain resources at home/school, clickable e-mail contact to the teachers (albeit with a health warning explaining that it may take a few days to receive a reply) a 'how to support your child' page with youtube clips of how to pronounce the phonics sounds, printable resources etc. and a 'coming soon' feature on the homepage (in addition to the regularly updated calendar). It was maintained by a teacher who updated it once a week when she uploaded the weekly newsletter.

However, in September this site was deleted and replaced with a horribly officious, not that useful, site to align it with the two federated schools that 'our' one is unfortunate enough to be in a partnership with. Apparently the site is aimed at prospective parents and supply teachers . It no longer has up-to-date information re: closures, doesn't have photographs of children's work, doesn't contain information about what each year group is learning, doesn't give pointers on suitable resources for supporting your child at home, doesn't promote PTA events (although most of those have been stopped anyway to be honest). It's rubbish.